How can you measure vertical distance in a section?

[Jose Emmanuel Bueno]

How can you measure vertical distance in a section/profile view? (i.e. from any point in the top of pipe to any point in the section)

[darren mckimm]

using the measure bearing / distance tool would be the quickest way. you cannot 'snap' to the outer lines of pipes but lines / tins can be snapped to, but with the 'cursor snap' on (the C icon in the snaps toolbar) you can get a pretty close height distance.
the result will be the dz numbers in the dialog box.

or turn on the grid lines in the view control. set the increment to 0.1m or similar and count the lines between each object.
as you zoom in the grid height lines will be labelled allowing height distances to be approximated.

hope it helps
daz

[darren mckimm]

just remembered.

exds have a macro that puts a box around services that can be displayed in section views, i think. will highlight clashes easier.

contact them or look on their website for more info.

daz

[Jose Emmanuel Bueno]

Thanks! I ran the clash detection tool with rules and I was just confirming that it picked up the correct clearance issues. The tip of showing the grid is really helpful and currently just what I need.

Regarding the bearing/distance tool, it's hard to use it in the section view. Other than you cannot get an exact point-to-point distance, I think it's reference is still on for the plan (x and y) rather than exclusively for z axis in the section view. Maybe the sections need to be plotted first?

Currently, I'm more familiar in AutoCAD C3D than in 12d. I thought I could find a similar command that's in C3D which is the "DI" or distance command.

[Joel Allsop]

Go to Utilities=>Measure=>Value and click the button on the right of the Value field.

Provided you can snap to the points you're trying to measure, you can do a Point-to-Point >DZ measurement between 2 points.